


What's In A Name

by Elleth



Category: The Tea Dragon Society (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Identity Reveal, M/M, Names, Pre-Relationship, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-07 21:35:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20462588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: It's market day in town, and Minette makes the acquaintance of a most peculiar dragon. Can he help her unravel the mystery writing on her wrist?





	1. G -

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveradept](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/gifts).

Minette hung back at a corner of the - the marketplace, the woman she was following had said. That's where she was heading. 

Now, Minette couldn't remember what a marketplace was until she saw it, another of the lost memories - a great, bustling square branching out into smaller streets of stalls, where people were exchanging all manner of things. Awnings of colourful fabrics kept out the glare of the sunlight, streamers fluttered overhead, and a buzz of conversation hung over the place. The scent of cabbage and apples made her mouth water, and something freshly-baked and sweet beckoned. 

She was so hungry. How long since she'd last eaten anything that hadn't been berries in the forest where she had found a hollow trunk to sleep in? 

Minette stepped gingerly into the crowd. Too many people at once - it wasn't good. It was too much. How had she even gotten here? She'd followed someone -

\- and she'd lost sight of the woman in the crowd. She had seemed familiar, somehow, hooves and antlers and soft, light fur. Minette shook her head to keep the tears at bay, and from the corner of her eye caught sight of a colourful fabric banner rippling above the baker's stall. In loopy script it said…_something_. Minette couldn't read it - another thing she knew by now she had forgotten - but the last word's first letter made her heartbeat pick up.

It looked like the first letter of the writing on her wrist. Some of the other letters looked the same as well, but she'd seen those before - slightly different and more orderly, but never that one, the loopy one almost curling in on itself like a snake or a dragon sprawled out like a crescent moon, its tail in a downward loop.

She evaded a the figure of another girl who brushed past her on some errand or another, small and dark with a mop of curls, and followed her through the crowd with her gaze for a moment, unsure why. Only after that, she summoned her courage, stepped up to the stall, and had to clench her hands in the pockets of her dress to not simply snatch one of the sweet pastries on display. She tilted her head up at the owner, and felt a smile coming on as the baker looked down at her from inscrutable dragon eyes under gold-rimmed half glasses. She liked him already, or at least he felt like there was no reason to be afraid of him. 

"Poor girl," he said. "You look like you are a long way from home." 

Minette nodded. To her embarrassment, her stomach rumbled, and she reached out for one of the pastries, hovering her hand above it. She couldn't manage to speak. 

"Take one." A dragon smile that made his braided whiskers twitch. Probably stirred by his voice, a smaller dragon weaselled up the man's clothes to sit on his shoulder, moving like a ferret she'd seen in the forest at one point when it had stopped to look at her sleeping spot. 

Minette blindly snatched up a pastry, turned, and darted away through the crowd. She'd expected shouting - the last time she'd done this in some other town there had been shouting for her to come back and pay - but there wasn't any this time. As she turned around, there was only the bustle of the marketplace, and the banner of the baker's stall flapping in the summer breeze with its secret still unsolved.

*

The pastry didn't last long to quench her hunger, and it was so sweet that it made her thirsty more than anything else. In the forest, Minette drank from a clear stream and found more berries - she'd already learned that not all that looked good were good, some were bitter, and some made her tummy hurt and cramp awfully all night. She liked the shining black berries on their thorny loops best anyway, and those were good to eat. 

Minette counted the days. She snuck into town every morning, lingering at the marketplace corner once she'd found it, but horse-carts and walkers dominated the square then, so there was no reason for her to go further until the next market day rolled around. Her heart skipped when that day came, seven days after the first time.

Minette made a beeline through the crowd for the bannered stall. This time, together with the scent of the sweet pastries, there was something else - a little bitter, a little familiar, a little like - white flowers - 

\- as if just breathing it in made her calmer and helped her remember something. 

_Ch-_

Chamomile tea. 

This time, the dragon gave her a small earthenware cup of it when she pointed wordlessly, after his eyes went to the hem of her dress and lingered there - oh. Dirty and torn as it was, that wasn't a surprise. She'd tried very hard to keep it clean, but living in the forest didn't make that easy. 

In response, blushing, she held out a handful of black berries that had stained her fingers purple already. The dragon smiled and took them, offering one to the dragon perching on his shoulder again. "Thank you, from both Jasmine and me," he said, popping one into his own mouth as well before feeding more berries to the dragon. "This is very kind of you. I can tell you do not have much to give, and that makes these especially precious. Hmm." 

Minettte froze blowing into her cup to cool down the tea when he ate another berry. His wide sleeve had slipped down, revealing a word in the leathery skin on his wrist. She stared down at her own, and back at his, also halting in mid-motion. 

When the shock eased away, she gulped down the rest of the tea, left the cup rolling on the counter as it toppled, and took off. 

She needed to think. 

* 

The answer came into her dream that night. She remembered, the next morning, flashes of the cave temple. Visions shimmering in her scrying mirror, the name fading into existence on her wrist. Her teachers drilling alphabets, writing systems and symbolism from every corner of the world into her head to learn to interpret her visions. The banner, clearly now. 

_Hesekiel's Tea and Baked Goods_

Visit the Tea House!

Goods.

**G.**

The name again. The one on her wrist. The image of a young girl, small and dark and with a mop of tousled hair in a crowd of others.

G -

Minette woke with a start, clutching her wrist, her mind a blank slate with the writing just out of reach again.


	2. R -

Two more market days passed, and Minette was afraid to go back. 

She couldn't tell why - now that she had been offered the dragon's kindness twice, perhaps something made her fear that the third time would be the last, like in some half-remembered stories.

Three wishes that would bring the hero's story to the end, but if she had to leave she wouldn't know where to go next. She had grown to like her hollow log, the small pink flowers peeking from the ground around it, and the berries ripening all around her in abundance. 

She hadn't been hungry in quite a while now, although she was getting tired of blackberries, and her dress was barely recognizable as white anymore with all the stains. 

She had already thought about getting another dress - something warmer, because the nights sometimes became a little chill by now - in town, if she knew how to pay for it. She had no money, and this was the largest wish she had had yet. A dress was much more expensive than a pastry or a cup of tea, and she couldn't ask that of - 

\- _Hesekiel_ \- 

with nothing more than berries to repay him.

Minette laid her head on her arms. It was three more days until the next market day, and she had time to decide until then - go or not go. More pastries, more tea, more kindness. The name on his wrist. A clue that she would have to follow. That might have her leave her forest.

Or maybe asking him - maybe that would be enough. Maybe seeing the banner would help her remember the rest of the letters of the name on her wrist. Maybe that person would know where she might go, where she belonged, how she might get home. Maybe the dragon might explain what it meant, since he also had writing on his wrist.

She had surreptitiously glanced at the arms of passersby on the way home after her cup of chamomile tea, and there had been writing on one every now and then, sometimes framed by artful bangles or tattoos that enveloped the name in flowers or hearts. 

Whatever the names meant, they clearly were important. 

Something in her laughed in response, briefly. It felt like she had slipped a piece of the puzzle into its slot, made a tiny step to complete the full picture. 

The evening before the market, Minette found the marketplace again, and waited where she thought the stall might be, at the feet of a statue at the center of it, a beautiful woman on a rearing horse, her sword drawn. Minette fell asleep sitting there. 

*

It was just before dawn when something shook her shoulder, and she was on her feet before the thought registered, casting around lost at the change in the landscape of the square. Market booths had sprung up and people were busy unloading crates of market goods.

"Good morning." Hesekiel crouched by her, offering a tray. On it lay a pastry and a cup of tea - something different from the chamomile the time before.

Minette sniffed appreciatively; a sweet, woody aroma wafted at her. It reminded her of the forest in sunshine, but also tickled something in the back of her mind. Perhaps she'd had this before, wherever she had come from. Maybe her parents had made it for her sometimes.

"Rooibos," Hesekiel said softly. "You're welcome to it; I can easily spare something every now and then - or you could help out at the tea house, learn about our Tea Dragons and earn your keep." 

Minette stared. She hadn't dared to hope that her wish might actually get her anywhere, and now she hadn't even had to make it. Hesekiel had offered all on his own. 

He rose and offered her hand - the one with the name on his wrist, and she tried to read it out, but the letters still slipped through her mind like water when she was awake, and Hesekiel eventually withdrew his hand. 

"No offense taken," he said eventually. "I need to go help my husband unload the cart so we can set up. He usually stays at the tea house because the cobbles here don't mix well with his wheelchair, and we can keep the business open that way, but we had a… ah, minor mishap in the kitchen last night. He likes to experiment with cooking, you see, and burned cheese smells awful; it would drive all our patrons out." He chuckled fondly. "I will see you in a little while, if you decide to stay." 

While Hesekiel went, Minette forced herself to eat the pastry slowly to make it last, licking the icing off it and sipping her tea in between. She pondered. Being there had brought nothing else back, and Hesekiel had not given her anything in terms of a clue, but she found that - even though the thought made her hands tremble around her teacup - that she liked the idea of belonging somewhere. She liked her log, but it was lonely, and often sad. And summer was ending. The first trees in the forest were beginning to turn, and even though the days remained warm, the nights had started growing longer. 

She wouldn't want to be alone out there in the autumn storms, or in winter when the snow came. 

She swallowed the last bite of pastry flaking between her teeth and washed it down with the last little bit of tea, picked up the tray, and wandered over to Hesekiel's stall.

The banner winked happily at her in the lightening sky. The first word, she thought, must be Hesekiel's name, and she mouthed it quietly. The word fit the sound of his name when she said it. The word also had a letter of the ones on her wrist, three times. And then the _G_ that she remembered.

She kept comparing the letters, feeling herself frown in concentration. There was one letter missing that she could find nowhere on the banner, the small hooked staff that stood second on her wrist.

"Oh, hello." Hesekiel had noticed her from behind the counter, sorting small packages of leaves and brown crumbly powder onto the table next to a paper bag full of pastries, humming quietly to himself as he dealt with a customer, and Minette hung back to let the girl pay and leave, ignoring the flutter of her heart to see the goblin smile on her face when their eyes met. Once the girl was gone, Minette thrust the tray at Hesekiel, and poked at his wrist when he reached out to take it. 

"Hello," she said. "What's that?" 

Hesekiel smiled. "So you can talk after all - although I expected you to know this of all things. It is my soulmate's name. My husband Erik's name. I am lucky in that we found one another before marrying other people." He touched her wrist. "And this is yours."

Perhaps she was too swept away by coming a step closer to the revelation to wonder much about Hesekiel's words.

"Can you say his name again?" 

"Erik," Hesekiel said. "Why are you asking?"

"R. It's an R!" Minette cried, her heart beating wildly. "Gr!" 

Hesekiel laughed. "Aha, are you learning to read?"

Minette nodded her head wildly, her hair falling over her face and hiding her laughter.


	3. E-T-A

In spite of the offer that Hesekiel had made for Minette to work at the tea house, she didn't go there. She didn't know where it was, for one thing. It scared her, for the other. She liked the market, for the third. If she would work anywhere, she'd do it at the market, but even that was still too much for her for long, and Hesekiel didn't press her to accept his offer. She was grateful for it.

She hadn't seen Erik yet - he'd been gone by the time she had finished her breakfast that one morning he'd been there, and even though she didn't think that Hesekiel - kind, sweet, old Hesekiel, would marry a bad man, she couldn't bring herself to go to meet him.

Minette dropped another mushroom into the bag that Hesekiel had given her at the last market day. It was almost half full of the mushrooms and beechnuts that Hesekiel had shown her in the forest and asked her to collect. He was going to make special autumn treats out of them, because by now the leaves had turned for good, flaming orange and yellow overhead. Minette loved autumn, played in the fallen leaves when it was dry, and chased the silver strands of spiderwebs that sometimes drifted on the breeze. 

And she did work for Hesekiel, a little, in a manner of speaking, coming to him every market day with her spoils and receiving favours in response, the latest of which was a cowl of dark brown wool that kept her wonderfully warm and dry when it rained, and a colourful umbrella out of thin leather that she could open in front of the entrance of her log to keep the wind and rain out. 

She liked Hesekiel, but had decided to stay. She also had a blanket now. It had been Hesekiel's first payment to her, and it had seemed so much that she had balked at taking it at first, and only done so after she had spent a night truly shivering. 

She hefted the bag and carried it to the market. Her hooves sank into mud on the way, and she lost track of where she was going once, coming into a part of the town that she didn't know at all yet, of high houses, workshops and courtyards, even though the area seemed empty - maybe everyone was at the market?

No, not everyone. Somewhere the sound of a hammer rang, and, drawn deeper into the street by the sound, Minette stood and watched outside one such courtyard where a goblin woman and a little girl were working with glowing metal with hammers, hard enough to make sparks fly and reflect on their fire-painted skin, the flickering obscuring their features. She couldn't help a pang of familiarity, for some reason - maybe this girl, small and dark was the one from the market she'd seen twice now, and whose memory stuck bright and clear in her mind, but even then... she didn't know what to do with that.

And she had somewhere to be, but her feet remained rooted to the spot. She liked the melody of the hammers. She liked watching the way the two of them moved nearly in unison, the girl copying the woman - mother and daughter, perhaps, or student and teacher, or both. 

"Come on, Greta," the woman called when the girl stopped pumping the bellows to catch her breath, instead of bringing the furnace back to heat. "It's not hot enough yet, just a little more." The girl kept pausing, wiping one grimy wrist over her forehead. It was hard to see underneath the dirt, but Minette thought there was a name there as well, and something made her want to find out what it was. Something else that kept her feet in place.

"Greta!" The mother again, and the girl - Greta - sprang back into action, but not before pausing the shoot a quizzical look at the gate where Minette stood, and waving at her with the biggest, warmest grin Minette had ever seen, looking up from her work every now and then as if to see if Minette was still there. As if she had never seen a faunicorn before.

_Greta._ What a nice name, Minette thought, watching the sparks fly from their work until the market's opening bell rang out across the houses and startled her out of her mesmerized concentration. It couldn't be far now, and if she retraced her steps, she'd find her way.

* 

"Why," Minette said, in between bites of a mushroom pastry and sips of jasmine tea, and hardly pausing to swallow before the words tumbled out - the tea made her mind race - "is it that there are so many people with no soulmate names on their wrists, Hesekiel?" 

Hesekiel counted change into a customer's hand, and turned to her when he had bagged the tea for the woman. "Hm? Oh." A strange look crossed his face.

"Well, if you fail to find your soulmate after a certain point in time, usually in your teenage years - for faunicorns, goblins and humans, at least, since you age at about the same speed in your early years - it fades out, and sometimes fades entirely, especially if you grow to love someone else. Sometimes, if the bond is strong enough, the new name may appear in place of the old one. Losing a name is considered a very lamentable event, or at least it used to be. I cannot say that I miss having your life planned out for you in advance, to some degree, by whatever force marks the names on us. It has always been that way, I am surprised that you do not know about it, especially as a prophetess yourself." 

"I'm a… prophetess?" 

Hesekiel looked taken aback, and Minette paused, unsure what to do next, until he gave a little shrug and continued: "In training, by the marks on your cheeks, but I was expecting that you were on your prophet's journey, living as you did for a reason. I might have taken steps to see you cared for more properly otherwise.

Minette felt a cold weight settle into her stomach that even a gulp of steaming tea couldn't wash away. "I'm a prophetess…" 

Hesekiel nodded and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Your culture is famous for them. There are not many people in our world who can see the future the way your kind can, and to have your first marks already at your age, you must have been gifted with strong true sight." 

Images began to run through her head. The dim blue of a cave opening behind a curtain of flowers. The lit windows of the school, the priestesses waiting to receive her at the pier while the boat slid away again through the dark water, taking the faces of her parents into obscurity after their farewell. The… the… need to know... the scrying glass... shattering... Greta's image in the shards... 

Something flashed behind her eyes, and Minette clutched her head, and then Hesekiel's arms came around her, holding her while she shivered through a rush of memories.

* 

"... so I ran away. And I forgot everything. At first I didn't even remember my own name, but it came back to me eventually when I was dreaming. I didn't remember anything else, though, and I only knew that this… writing on my wrist was some clue that I had to learn, and maybe I could go home, but I haven't managed to learn to read all of it yet." Minette felt tears pricking her eyes as she looked up at Hesekiel's frowning face. "Can't you help me?"

"I _could_," he said. "But I should not. There is something peculiar and private about soulmate names. They can be read by anyone who knows how to read, of course, but they are hardly spoken about by them. You see, there is a part of the person's soul in it, and it will eventually draw you together. Some people believe that speaking the name will strengthen the bond and act as a call, and I should not be the one summoning your soulmate, nor telling you who it is. I fear I have heard enough stories about bad luck that I am convinced of it coming to pass if I gave you too much help." 

He paused, and took off his glasses to polish them. "What I can do is teach you to read. Would you like that?" 

"Yes!" Minette sat up with a start. "I only need three more letters to make it complete, and if you read me your sign, I can match them up! But I'd like to learn to read properly, too!" 

Hesekiel laughed, and let her slip from his hold back onto the cobbled pavement. "Very well then. It says _H-e-s-e-k-i-e-l-'-s T-e-a a-n-d B-a-k-e-d G-o-o-d-s V-i-s-i-t t-h-e T-e-a H-o-u-s-e_," he said, and Minette followed along dutifully. 

"E! _Gre_!" she called when he came to the second letter, feeling warmth rise up to drive out the chill. "T! _Gret_!" "A!" "G-R-E-T-A. Greta! The name is _Greta_!" 

Hesekiel smiled down at her. "Indeed it is. I believe you met a few times already, or almost did so. Such near misses are common until the knowledge comes to you, and you can take further steps to ascertain that she is the one, but from your expression I am sure that your Greta is the very one who has been here a few times while you were, of all the Gretas in the world. Ask her to see her wrist once she appears - she usually comes here on Sundays to buy pastries for her family.

With a shout of wild laughter, Minette threw herself back at him and hugged him. 

_Greta_.

She only had to wait a little longer.


End file.
